BENGALURU: The Karnataka Postal Circle has been facing an acute shortage of the Re.1 revenue stamp, which is crucial for all finance-related documents.
Faced with demand from the public for the same, it is now redistributing the available stocks across districts. The revenue stamps are provided by the Treasury Department of the State government.
The head offices of the Postal Department in 28 cities across Karnataka have nil stock available with them. Bengaluru, Ballari, Hosapete, Bidar, Athani, Chikkodi, Hubballi, Dharwad, Koppal, Kalaburagi, Hassan and Arisikere figure among those which have no such stamps available.
The situation is better in some head offices with Vijayapura having 1,16,928 stamps, Chitradurga having 62,066, Udipi 53,557, Haveri 52,224, and Bagalkot 30,504, reveal data collected from the postal department.
BS Narahari, HR Manager of a private firm told TNIE, “The Post Offices in Bengaluru have been saying they do not have stocks for quite some time. Whenever I need to provide the billing to Central government organisations, we need to mandatorily use a revenue stamp.” Narahari manages to get them through his company staff in Belagavi, who procure them from Maharashtra.
No one in the State government’s Finance department could be reached for their response.
A finance official in a civic agency, requesting anonymity, said, “Revenue Stamp is a very crucial requirement in some financial documents. We cannot keep waiting for the stamp to arrive at that juncture if it is not available in a City.”
Asked about the issue, Chief Postmaster General, Karnataka Circle, S Rajendra Kumar, said, “Revenue stamp stocks are not available in post offices in Bengaluru and some other districts for nearly four months now. The matter is being escalated with the State government. Meanwhile, we are redistributing the available stock in some post offices with the rest.”
A senior finance official in another civic agency said due to the numerous modes of payment accepted presently, it will not greatly impact large numbers. “Salaries used to be paid with staff made to sign on the Revenue stamp in the past. We are beyond that stage now,” he said.